Hero's welcome for Baradar the Butcher: Triumphant Taliban co-founder arrives in Afghanistan after 20-year exile and is cheered by crowds as his motorcade races through the streets of Kandahar
Taliban deputy leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and a delegation arrived in Kandahar from Qatar
He is reported to have been one of Taliban founder Mullah Omar's most trusted commanders before his death
Footage purports to show Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar returning to cheering crowds in Afghanistan
The Taliban have posted a triumphalist video seemingly showing one of its cofounders arriving to a hero's welcome in Kandahar and locals cheering on his motorcade.
The group says the footage shows Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar returning to cheering crowds in Afghanistan on Tuesday following 20 years of exile amid the Western effort to eliminate the Taliban threat.
On Sunday his forces had taken Kabul, and Baradar, head of the Taliban's political office, is now tipped to become the country's next leader, following the collapse of the previous US-backed regime.
The 53-year-old had been deputy leader under ex-chief Mullah Mohammed Omar, whose support for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden led to the invasion of Afghanistan following the September 11 terror attacks.
Baradar arrived in Kandahar Province on Tuesday, landing in the insurgent group's former capital just days after they took control of the country.
Taliban spokesman Dr M Naeem uploaded footage of his flight landing and of a motorcade of 4x4s bearing the white flag of the organisation.
He wrote: 'This afternoon, a high-level delegation from the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan headed by Mullah Baradar Akhund left Qatar and arrived in our beloved country this afternoon and landed at Kandahar Airport.'
Commentators have pointed out similarities between Baradar's return and that of Ayatollah Khomeini to Iran in 1979, following 14 years of exile in Paris as an outlawed cleric.
Baradar, who was born in Uruzgan province in 1968, was raised in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban movement, and went on to fight with the mujahedeen against the Soviets in the 1980s.
Afterwards, as the country was gripped by a civil war between rival warlords and Baradar set up an Islamic school in Kandahar with his former commander Mohammed Omar, and the two mullahs helped to found the Taliban movement, an ideology which embraced hardline orthodoxy and strived for the creation of an Islamic Emirate.
The Taliban seized power in 1996 after conquering provincial capitals before marching on Kabul, just as they have in recent months, and Baradar went on to perform a number of different roles during the group's five-year reign.
He was the deputy defence minister when the US invaded in 2001, and though he went into hiding, he remained active in the Taliban's leadership in exile.
Baradar had been freed from jail in Pakistan three years ago at the request of the U.S. government. Just nine months ago, he posed for pictures with Donald Trump's Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to sign a peace deal in Doha which now lies in tatters.
